Space

George �鶹��Ƶ is launching a Space Forward Frontiers Seminar with Northrop Grumman

Domonique Hopkins — Mon, 26 Jan 2026 15:45:36 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ is launching a Space Forward Frontiers Seminar with Northrop Grumman Domonique Hopkins Mon, 01/26/2026 - 10:45

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�鶹��Ƶ’s College of Science is launching the Space Forward Frontiers Seminar Series in spring 2026, in partnership with Northrop Grumman and George �鶹��Ƶ’s College of Engineering and Computing.

The one-credit, in-person seminar (PHYS 391/590, cross-listed as ME 500) is open to undergraduate and graduate students of all majors interested in the space industry.

Limited to 50 students, the Thursday afternoon seminar features weekly lectures from George �鶹��Ƶ faculty and industry professionals, offering practical and academic perspectives on today’s space sector. Topics include the space industry’s foundations, enabling technologies, policy considerations, and future directions, with the inaugural offering focusing on crowding and events in the space environment.

With no prerequisites or textbooks, the course is highly accessible and connects students to such emerging opportunities as NASA’s Landolt Mission, led by George �鶹��Ƶ faculty. The seminar also supports the university’s Grand Challenge Initiative (GCI), advancing both 21st-century education and pioneering space exploration through industry collaboration.

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A calibration from campus to the cosmos

Nathan Kahl — Fri, 15 Aug 2025 14:48:15 +0000

A calibration from campus to the cosmos  Nathan Kahl Fri, 08/15/2025 - 10:48

�鶹��Ƶ is the home of the $20 million Landolt NASA Space Mission, placing a satellite that will serve as an artificial “star” in orbit around the Earth…and College of Engineering and Computing students are instrumental in the payload’s construction. It’s experience that not only significantly bolsters a resume, but also allows students to work on a project of their dreams.  

Fatima Bahzad, a computer science graduate student said, “It’s the most fun I’ve ever had in school.”  

Bahzad said that working on the mission is the most fun she's had at George �鶹��Ƶ. Photo provided.

Bahzad explained her role: “The satellite, which is about the size of a bread box, is comprised of layers and each layer has a chip and the chips need to talk to each other. There’s also a primary chip that sends commands to all of them. I’m working on the communication between the chips.”

Getting an opportunity to turn theory into practice is incredibly gratifying, she said. “Learning theoretical stuff is one thing, but applying it is another. This is one of the first opportunities I’ve had to work on something ‘real.’” 

The payload is being built in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), with whom the teams checks in frequently. The artificial star will allow scientists to calibrate telescopes and more accurately measure the brightness of stars ranging from those nearby to the distant explosions of supernova in far-off galaxies. By establishing absolute flux calibration, the mission will address several open challenges in astrophysics, including the speed and acceleration of the universe expansion. 

On the engineering side, the project is led by Piotr Pachowicz, an associate professor of electrical and computer engineering. Pachowicz brought PhD student Jay Deorukhkar, one of his advisees, onto the project.  

Deorukhkar said he’s been working on testing the individual payload modules. These will later integrate with the satellite bus, which is the core structure and support system that is separate from the specific payload. Reliability of small satellite buses against radiation effects is also the subject of his dissertation, making this work particularly relevant.  

Deorukhkar is working on his second project that will send an object into space. Photo provided.

“My role as an engineer is to help design, prototype, and test specific payload components. We’re early in the design stage, working towards the preliminary design review of our payload.” He added, “The great thing about this project is really the end-to-end experience, from the inception of the mission  to the actual launch and operation of the science payload.”  

Deorukhkar has some experience with that, having worked on the ThinSat project in 2021, which sent a small satellite into low earth orbit. He knows about the anxiety as the launch date nears. “It's a bone-chilling moment when the rocket starts and you know your device is on there and it’s out of your hands at that point. You can only pray and trust that everything you've learned and you've done just works.”  

Bahzad is still trying to keep her feet planted on the ground, so to speak, at times overwhelmed to be part of something so significant. “We met recently with some people from NASA and I was just sitting in the corner and couldn’t believe it. I was just thinking, ‘This is so cool!’”   

Housed in the George �鶹��Ƶ College of Science, the mission launches in 2029, when the artificial star will orbit earth 22,236 miles up, far enough away to look like a star to telescopes back on Earth. This orbit also allows it to move at the same speed of the Earth’s rotation, keeping it in place over the United States during its first  year in space. 

�鶹��Ƶ faculty and students will work together with nine other organizations beyond NASA and NIST on this first-of-its-kind project for a university in the Washington, D.C., area. 

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Peter Pachowicz

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Hina Kazmi: Meet the Schar School Alum Who Is Launching ‘Intro to Space Policy’

Andrew J Schappert — Thu, 17 Jul 2025 15:55:13 +0000

Hina Kazmi: Meet the Schar School Alum Who Is Launching ‘Intro to Space Policy’ Andrew J Schappert Thu, 07/17/2025 - 11:55

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Hina Kazmi: ‘We’re expanding our access to space, and it has become critical infrastructure—but what does that mean policywise?’ Photo provided

Hina Kazmi, after seeing Voyager 1’s images of Saturn: ‘I knew I was going into aerospace.’

When you ask Hina Kazmi if she would ever like to live in a colony on the moon, her answer is quick and enthusiastic.

“Oh, I would absolutely do that,” she said. “Do they need a tester for the first flight to Mars? I would do that too.”

It’s not a farfetched question to ask Kazmi. The Schar School of Policy and Government at �鶹��Ƶ adjunct professor is set to teach a new course, Introduction to Space Policy, beginning in August with the start of the 2025 fall semester. It’s one of the rare courses in the country that will bring the growing fields related to space exploration—and exploitation—into the classroom.

The course is designed to support a broad range of public policy interests, Kazmi said. Those interested in international and national security, engineering, business, public administration, and other topics will find the course useful in their academic pursuits and future careers.

“When you think of space,” she said, “you think of commercial startups and Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk launching their rockets. That’s the fun stuff. But beyond that excitement there are huge national, international, and commercial aspects to this industry.”

As more of the business of space falls into in private hands, there comes a need for clear, informed, and educated thinking on public policy, she said.

“In the past, [space activity] was government controlled, but now it’s commercially available for navigation, weather prediction, communications. We’re expanding our access to space, and it has become critical infrastructure—but what does that mean policywise?”

As an example of the field’s growth, the tiny island of Bahrain, where the Pakistan native spent her middle school years, has a space agency. “Every country now sees this as important,” she said.

Kazmi, an engineer by training who at one point was leading programs for NASA, developed a fascination for space in 1980, when the interstellar craft Voyager 1 sent its first images of Saturn back to Earth from some 800 million miles away. The astronomical event made an impression on the young scholar.

“I knew I was going into aerospace,” she said.

Kazmi earned her undergraduate degree in aerospace engineering, with a minor in mathematics, in 1993 from Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Arizona.

She also holds a master of business administration degree. After rising through the ranks in technical and management roles at major private and public aerospace leaders, she began teaching at George �鶹��Ƶ, revitalizing a dormant course in managing government contracting.

Realizing her future was in academia, she earned a master of public policy degree from the Schar School in 2008, followed by a PhD in public policy in 2016. She received the Joseph A. Fisher Award for best PhD dissertation.

“I really believe Gen Z, who is in college now, and Gen Alpha behind them will be the space generations,” she said. “Space tourism, living in space, working in space, moon colonies—all of that is happening. We’re in the very, very early stages of it.”

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George �鶹��Ƶ faculty member helps NASA astrobiology task force shape future goals

ckearney — Wed, 02 Jul 2025 15:40:55 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ faculty member helps NASA astrobiology task force shape future goals ckearney Wed, 07/02/2025 - 11:40

�鶹��Ƶ researcher Anamaria Berea was selected to serve on NASA's Decadal Astrobiology Research and Exploration Strategy (DARES) Task Force 1.

Anamaria Berea. Photo by Ron Aira/Office of University Branding

This group of experts was charged with shaping the future of NASA’s astrobiology research over the following decade. As one of only 13 scientists chosen from across the United States, Berea contributed to identifying key research priorities, synthesizing community input, and guiding the development of NASA’s long-term strategy for exploring the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the universe.

With an interdisciplinary background as a computational data scientist and artificial intelligence researcher, Berea, who is an associate professor in the Department of Computational and Data Sciences, brings a unique perspective to the task force. Most recently, she led the ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record project, a digital time capsule that preserves Earth’s cultural and scientific heritage and offers future lunar visitors a glimpse of life on Earth in the early 2020s. In March, the payload made a successful moon landing, a historic milestone for NASA’s Artemis program.

The astrobiology task force worked through more than 120 community-submitted papers to recommend nine major themes for the project. These themes, which range from detecting life on other planets to workforce and career development in astrobiology, were discussed and shared with the public at a two-day workshop in May. Phase two of the initiative will invite another task force to take these themes and compose a formalized strategy to support and advance the evolving needs of the field.

“We have rovers on Mars. We had probes on Venus to sample its atmosphere. But in the next era of space, it looks like there will be a focus on human spaceflight. And if we have humans in space, then how will this change the landscape for astrobiology research?” Berea said.

Astrobiology research has the potential to tackle some of the most profound cosmological questions humanity faces. It deeply explores the origins of life, suggesting that discovering even simple microbial life on nearby planets like Mars would fundamentally change our understanding of how life began on Earth.

These big questions capture significant attention from both the scientific community and the general public, highlighting the broad impact and importance of astrobiology research.

Read about the ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record project

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Anamaria Berea joined the Access to Excellence podcast to discuss her research on Mars settlements and Unidentified Aerial Phenomenon.

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International Space Station experiment may improve climate science predictions

Teresa Donnellan — Wed, 05 Mar 2025 20:33:24 +0000

International Space Station experiment may improve climate science predictions Teresa Donnellan Wed, 03/05/2025 - 15:33

The earth’s atmosphere is full of aerosols, both from natural events such as volcanic eruptions and human activity such as burning fossil fuels. The Department of Mechanical Engineering’s Jeffrey Moran is planning an experiment on the International Space Station (ISS) to better understand what factors drive aerosols from place to place, which could enable climate scientists to predict the overall effect of aerosols on climate with less uncertainty.

“Aerosols can exacerbate or alleviate climate change, depending on what they’re made of,” said Moran. “For example, carbon soot aerosols can intensify warming by absorbing sunlight that would otherwise be reflected back into space. Other aerosols, such as sulfates, can reduce warming by increasing solar reflection.”

Aerosols’ location also matters—for example, many aerosols can act as nuclei for clouds to form, and this can exert an overall warming or cooling effect in different locations. “The overall effect aerosols will have on the climate is hard to predict, partly because we don’t have a full understanding of what factors cause them to migrate from one place to another,” said Moran.

Jeff Moran. Photo by Evan Cantwell/Office of University Branding

The experiment is specifically examining whether and how temperature gradients influence the movement of certain aerosols through the atmosphere. Moran’s team, along with his collaborator, David Warsinger of Purdue University, and a team of undergraduate students there, are designing an apparatus inside of which aerosols of a certain size can be observed across a temperature gradient. They recently completed a fit check to confirm that the apparatus both fits in the ISS microscope’s enclosure and that the aerosol container, or cuvette, is transparent enough for observation.

Moran said the experiment could help climate researchers understand how temperature differences, which are common in the atmosphere, cause particles to move through the air.

“If the effect of the temperature gradient is significant, it could give us a clearer indication of how aerosols will affect the climate in the future. It could also inform geoengineering proposals, which would seek to mitigate climate change by intentionally injecting aerosols into the atmosphere, since we would have a better sense of where they will go, and thus what their overall effect will be,” said Moran. “It could also offer a way to control aerosols on the ground, for example, by using thermophoresis to collect virus-laden aerosols from the HVAC systems of hospitals.”

The team’s apparatus includes a 3D-printed stage with hot and cold fixtures on either end. A prototype cuvette is mounted between them in the enclosure of the microscope. Crucially, the apparatus fits snugly inside the microscope enclosure, which is necessary for the experiment to be carried out in microgravity.

Crystals of the NaCl sample (see Figure 2), imaged using the 2x objective on the Keyence BZ-X810 microscope (nearly identical to the one on the ISS).

“The capstone team did a wonderful job,” Moran added.

The team tested the cuvette’s transparency by placing sodium chloride, table salt, inside it and taking images with the microscope. To verify airtightness, the team placed the salt-filled cuvette in a beaker of water and observed that the salt (which is soluble in water) remained in its solid form, indicating no water had leaked into the cuvette.

“We obviously don’t want to pose an inhalation hazard to the ISS crew, so it’s important that the particle samples be packaged on the ground in containers that are as close to airtight as possible,” said Moran.

“These images are a promising first step, as they demonstrate that aerosols in the range of sizes we are considering (10-100 µm) can be clearly imaged through the prototype cuvettes using a microscope nearly identical to the one currently on the ISS,” said Moran.

From here, Moran, Warsinger, and a new team of students will work to improve the cuvette fabrication and polishing procedures. They will also test alternative cuvette materials such as quartz, which may be thinner and more transparent, thereby allowing them to take clearer images at a higher magnification. This would enable them to examine even smaller aerosol particles. The team is also refining the design of the cuvettes to improve optical transparency and minimize the thickness of the windows.

“We want to make the cuvettes smaller, bringing the hot and cold surfaces as close together as we can get them, because it's not really clear how steep of a temperature gradient we're going to need to induce motion,” Moran explained.

In addition, the team is finalizing their choice of aerosol materials to send to the ISS. They are currently set on using carbon soot, sodium chloride, and silica due to their relevance in atmospheric aerosols and climate science.

“Carbon soot is one of the most important materials in terms of climate, because it is known to intensify warming,” Moran said, adding that sodium chloride enters the atmosphere as sea spray and can drift to faraway locations, such as the North Pole, intensifying the warming that is already happening at a rapid pace there. Silica is a common ingredient in sand and thus a common material in the atmosphere as well. Overall, the team aims to strike a balance between having materials that can be studied safely on the ISS while also yielding insights into aerosol dynamics in the atmosphere.

The College of Engineering and Computing will cover Moran’s progress leading up to the experiment in space, scheduled for fall 2025 or spring 2026.

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�鶹��Ƶ scientist orchestrates Moon-based ‘message in a bottle’ for future generations

Katarina Benson — Mon, 03 Mar 2025 18:54:16 +0000

�鶹��Ƶ scientist orchestrates Moon-based ‘message in a bottle’ for future generations Katarina Benson Mon, 03/03/2025 - 13:54

Early Sunday, March 2, the ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record made a successful Moon landing as part of the Ghost Riders in the Sky Lunar mission that launched on January 15 from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

A message from Anamaria Berea's team that is now on the Moon. Photo provided

This mission, a part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services within the Artemis program, is carrying 10 NASA experiments and the ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record, the work of an interdisciplinary research team, led by �鶹��Ƶ researcher and alumna Anamaria Berea.

This ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record intends to preserve Earth’s cultural and scientific heritage for posterity with this specially designed payload, which includes a digital portion that mirrors the concept of the Voyager Golden Records. The archive will serve as a time capsule for future humans, offering them a glimpse of life on Earth during the early 2020s.

The creation of this lunar archive was a collaborative effort that began in early 2023 when Nick Searra, founder of the Interstellar Foundation, invited Berea to lead the project. Despite having no initial team or funding, Berea quickly gathered a group of scientists, philosophers, and linguists from such prestigious institutions as Barnard College, Columbia University, and the University of Cambridge. The team also received support from notable figures, including astronaut Scott Kelly and Jonathan Jiang from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

With a tight six-month deadline, the team created a message that could fit within the strict digital space limitations of the payload. The biggest challenge was deciding what to include. The team wanted the message to be a “dry-run” for future, more extensive interstellar messages, and ultimately settled on content that would be meaningful to archeologists or future pioneers.

The archive, delivered on special physical mediums designed for space provided by mission partner LifeShip, contains a wealth of wide-ranging content, including videos, scientific materials, global aspirations, historical records, and cultural artifacts. “The payload will reside on the Moon for eternity,” said Berea, who teaches in Department of Computational and Data Sciences of the College of Science.

The ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record includes a 1GB microchip containing videos, images, and texts that highlight humanity’s journey on Earth and the Moon, incorporating materials that reflect Earth’s cultural, scientific, and historical achievements. Among the key items is a 24-minute “Daily Life” video that showcases global snapshots of contemporary life. Each minute represents one hour from various parts of the Earth, from morning to night, and includes scenes of families cooking, children in school, workers in offices and fields, and people participating in cultural events. This “visual quilt” stitches together snapshots from world cultures, including indigenous communities, showcasing daily routines from all corners of the planet.

The archive also includes an “Aspirations” video, where individuals from around the world share their hopes for the future in their native languages. In addition, the payload houses images and content from UNESCO and Getty archives, including a representation of the COVID-19 pandemic. Other materials include the constitutions of 192 countries on Earth, the Apollo 11 launch codes, historical works, art, music, and scientific texts, such as works by Newton, Curie, and Asimov.

Berea even included a personal touch with an engraving of her name and affiliation with �鶹��Ƶ, symbolizing her contribution to this historic effort.

“The goal of the project was not to tell the story of famous individuals or events but to encapsulate a broader representation of human life,” Berea explains.

According to Berea, the project team chose a video format, blending video, subtitles, and code, as they believed it would be more easily understood by future beings, whether human or otherwise.

In addition to the digital content, the team took precautions to ensure the message could survive for millennia. In case digital technology becomes obsolete, parts of the message were engraved in analog nano-fiche and synthetic DNA on a 1MB capsule. This forward-thinking approach ensures that future civilizations, regardless of technological advancement, can access the message.

One of the most significant aspects of the ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record is the ethical responsibility of leaving a message for future generations. The team grappled with questions such as who the “receiver” of the message would be and what content would best represent humanity. “Who speaks for Earth?” they asked, recognizing the great responsibility of crafting a message that would stand the test of time.

“I have been honored and fascinated to collaborate with this interdisciplinary team of the most amazing scientists, humanists, artists and people from all walks of life,” said Berea. “I am forever grateful to my team and our collaborators for their trust, their dedication, their passion and their support to this project that will give us a tiny place in our interstellar future history.”

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Interested in more from Anamaria Berea? Listen to her discuss the chances of intelligent life beyond Earth on the Access to Excellence podcast.

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George �鶹��Ƶ scientist Anamaria Berea leads team to design lunar cultural archive for the ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’

ckearney — Thu, 16 Jan 2025 21:02:59 +0000

George �鶹��Ƶ scientist Anamaria Berea leads team to design lunar cultural archive for the ‘Pioneers of Tomorrow’ ckearney Thu, 01/16/2025 - 16:02

The ASPIRE ONE Lunar Record launched early on January 15 as part of the Ghost Riders in the Sky Lunar mission from the Kennedy Space Center in Florida, with a goal of establishing a new theoretical framework for planetary-scale archival communication.

Note from team on ASPIRE ONE. Photo provided

Anamaria Berea, an associate professor of computational sciences at �鶹��Ƶ, led an interdisciplinary team that designed a part of the LifeShip payload—an archive to preserve our Earth’s cultural and scientific heritage. It will be placed on the Moon through Firefly Aerospace’s Blue Ghost Lander.

Firefly missions are part of NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative in the Artemis program.

The digital portion of the LifeShip payload, similar to the Voyager Golden Records, contains diverse content including videos, global aspirations, scientific materials, historical records, and cultural artifacts intended for future humans to access. Highlights include Daily Life video capturing global snapshots of contemporary life, an Aspirations video featuring individuals sharing hopes for the future in their native languages, and collections of images from UNESCO and World Heritage archives. A Getty images documentation of the recent COVID-19 pandemic is also included.

Firefly Blue Ghost will deliver the lunar record to the Moon's surface. Photo courtesy of NASA

“We basically created an archive that is housed on a 1GB microchip encoded with diverse content,” said Berea, who also has a PhD is computational social sciences from George �鶹��Ƶ. “It is also engraved with NanoFiche, including Berea’s name and affiliation with �鶹��Ƶ.

If it lands successfully, the payload will be placed on the Moon after 45 days [early March] and live there for posterity.

“This portion of the payload includes the Apollo 11 launch code, various works of art and music, information about the Moon, Earth Constitutions, and more,” Berea shared. “Not only my face, voice, name, and work will be on the Moon for future generations, but �鶹��Ƶ’s legacy too.”

Learn more about Anamaria Berea’s work on George �鶹��Ƶ’s Access to Excellence podcast.

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A New Space Race

jharve9 — Thu, 19 Oct 2023 17:32:23 +0000

A New Space Race jharve9 Thu, 10/19/2023 - 13:32

Are we in a space race for cosmic resources? (Episode 6)

On the sixth episode of Our Future, Transformed, Hakeem Oluseyi, astrophysicist and research professor at �鶹��Ƶ, speaks with �鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington about how the race to exploit cosmic resources has geopolitical implications and why we had to start from scratch in our attempt to return to the Moon.

^{For billions of years, the sun has been depositing helium-3 in the lunar regolith. Maybe we could go to the Moon and mine the helium-3. And now we also know there’s water on the moon, right? So the key thing is our technology and our aspirations have come to a level where just as the United States has outposts around the world that make it easier to get where you want to go, The Moon could be that for Earth.”}

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Transcript EP 6: Our Future, Transformed: A New Space Race

Gregory Washington (00:10)

The recent Artemis mission that saw a NASA capsule orbit the moon was a huge step in preparation for an eventual visit to our nearest neighbor. How they do it?

Hakeem Oluseyi (00:24)

All my career, from a graduate student on, I've been hearing over and over again how we could not redo Apollo, right? The technology and the knowledge are lost, but yet here we are doing it again, and we soon will see Americans on the surface of the moon again and, hopefully a permanent presence.

Gregory Washington (00:47)

I'm the kind of person that says, okay, we did that; we already went to the moon. Why go back?

Hakeem Oluseyi (00:55)

Well, because, you know, why climb Mount Everest? I think it's a mixture of several things.

Number one, there's the scientific research component, okay? But there's also the economic opportunity that comes from having bases off Earth so that we could potentially take advantage of the resources that exist in outer space, like comets. Our economy now depends heavily on electronics, which require these very rare metals, rare on the surface of Earth but not rare in the core of Earth, which we don't have access to. But luckily, when other planets were forming early in our solar system, they differentiated just like the Earth did and all the heavy stuff saying to the center, but then later, they collided with something. And so now we have chunks of core stuff flying around out there; we're calling it asteroids. And so there's one asteroid out there that is, you know, at a value of more than something like a quintillion dollars, right, that we could potentially mine. So there's a third reason, and this is one that people don't like to talk about, but I think that there are geopolitical implications.

Gregory Washington (02:07)

And that was going to be my next question.

Hakeem Oluseyi (02:09)

Yeah.

Gregory Washington (02:10)

Are we on the dawn of a new race, a new space race?

Hakeem Oluseyi (02:15)

I think we are. I think we're already there, in fact, right? You know, sub, excuse me, low Earth orbit, orbital parameter space is being grabbed. And you look at the same thing for the moon.

So the question I have is, you know, the analogy I make, is it going to be more like the North Pole or the South Pole? And here's what I mean. All of us nations that are competitors, we exist in harmony at the South Pole because there is no military or commercial advantage to be gained there that anyone sees. But you go to the North Pole, not if it has melted, those continental shelves have oil. So everybody's fighting over it.

Gregory Washington (02:52)

Right.

Hakeem Oluseyi (02:53)

So what is going to be the case with the moon? What is it going to be the case with orbit?

What is going to be the case with Mars? We don't know the answer yet, but the thing is, is that we know the problem could potentially occur. So there's two things you want to do.

You want to get your treaties done, right, to keep the peace, but also just in case you

want to go and grab what you can grab while the gettings good, right? And, you know, that's the reality. You know, we have not reinvented human beings. We have not reinvented nations.

We're still in a competitive world, right? We're still in a dangerous world. So, you know, it's like hope for the best, but plan for the worst is kind of the approach.

Gregory Washington (03:32)

What do we know about the moon now that we didn't know before?

Hakeem Oluseyi (03:36)

Yeah. So the moon, we learned so much more and more and more about the moon. You know, the big surprise when the Apollo astronauts went up there, and they got some moon rocks and brought them back to Earth, it was, oh my goodness, the moon is made of Earth, right? But then we started studying the moon more, and we learned, you know, it's very different than far aside from the near side. And then people started thinking about fusion, and they thought, oh, maybe helium-3 is a better fuel to add to the deuterium than tritium because it's less radioactive initially. You know, for billions of years, the sun has been depositing helium-3 in the lunar regolith. Maybe we could go to the moon and mine the helium-3. It's not clear that that is a solution, but, you know, and now we also know there's water on the moon, right? So the key thing is our technology and our aspirations have come to a level where, just as the United States has outposts around the world in places like Guam, that makes it easier to get where you want to go. The moon can be that for Earth, right? The orbit is one thing, and then having a solid base where the gravitational cost of getting off that body is far less, and if that body has its own fuel right there, then that can be very valuable for taking advantage of.

Gregory Washington (04:55)

Going to Mars.

Hakeem Oluseyi (04:56)

The outer solar system. Exactly. And, you know, I really think that even though we may never colonize Mars, some people think we may. I think space tourism is a real thing that may happen.

Gregory Washington (05:10)

Outstanding.

Hakeem Oluseyi (05:11)

Yeah.

Gregory Washington (05:12)

So what new technologies, in your opinion, have to be developed in order to make this a reality?

Hakeem Oluseyi (05:18)

So they're already doing it, right? So it all depends. If you look, I think one of the key elements is fuel. So the big problem that Artemis had is that it still uses liquid hydrogen as the fuel. Liquid hydrogen, think about that, okay? It has to be like negative 450 degrees Fahrenheit. It's so low density. So keeping it inside of a hose is very difficult. Think about it like this. If you look at the difference in density between lead and water, the difference in density between water and liquid hydrogen is even greater.

Gregory Washington (05:49)

Then lead?

Hakeem Oluseyi (05:50)

Then lead, comparing lead and water.

Gregory Washington (05:52)

Wow.

Hakeem Oluseyi (05:53)

Yeah. So that stuff is very, very difficult to work with, right?

Gregory Washington (05:57)

What's next for the Artemis program? This is a phase deal, right?

Hakeem Oluseyi (06:00)

Yeah.

Gregory Washington (06:01)

So what happens next?

Hakeem Oluseyi (06:02)

What we did is we sent a craft without humans, and there were a lot of sensors on board. And the thing that we're doing now, which, you know, why didn't we think of this before. The space environment and radiation affect female bodies differently than it affects male bodies. So they put mannequins on there with sensors to figure out how the radiation environment is going to affect females. But then, now, we're going to do the same thing with real humans next. And so I love the way that NASA says when the next step is going to happen. They say, not before 2024, not, you know, on this date in 2024, but not before a particular date. But after we do that, then we're going to put, just like we have an international space station orbiting Earth, we're going to have an orbiting space station orbiting the Moon. And then we're going to actually send humans to land on the surface of the Moon and start taking care of business. We'll build a new Moon base on the surface, and then after that, it can now serve as a staging area to go beyond.

Gregory Washington (07:00)

We have a number of our students in the audience. I'd like to open it up for questions. So, any questions you have would be greatly appreciated.

Student1 (07:11)

So how do you just forget how to go to the Moon? That's what I'm kind of confused about.

Hakeem Oluseyi (07:17)

Yeah, that was a long time ago. And you know, when you are, when you have a factory that builds things, you know, it's outfitted to do that. And when you no longer have that purpose, you repurpose that factory. You tear everything down. And also, if you think about it, in my lifetime, how did we store digital data? It started off with those big, big floppies, and it went to a smaller floppy, then a smaller floppy, then I had Jazz Drive and all these other things. I can't use that now. I used to have an old box of VHS tapes. What am I going to play that in? I'm a member of the Screen Actors Guild, all right? So now it's time to vote for Oscar winners. They send me DVDs. How am I going to watch those movies? Right? So, you know, things just get out of date. So keep that in mind as you develop new knowledge. How do you keep it? How do you preserve it? And how do you pass it on to the next generation?

Gregory Washington (08:12)

Well, we know our future is intact, and we know we have another place that we will all visit someday soon.

Hakeem Oluseyi (07:21)

Yes.

Gregory Washington (07:22)

So I want to thank you.

Hakeem Oluseyi (07:24)

Thank you.

Gregory Washington (07:25)

Thank you for spending time with us. And I want to thank all of you for the next episode of �鶹��Ƶ, our future transformed.

Learn more

�鶹��Ƶ the Series

�鶹��Ƶ President Gregory Washington hosts a YouTube series titled “Our Future, Transformed: �鶹��Ƶ Spotlights the World’s Grand Challenges.” The series features faculty experts speaking about some of the most debated and significant topics of our day with an audience of Honors College students. Experts in the first season discuss the key solutions to key issues, including water policies in the West, police reform, problems at our Southern border, clean energy, and getting more women into STEM fields.

Guest Bio

Hakeem Oluseyi served as the visiting Robinson Professor at �鶹��Ƶ from 2021-2023, and he is the president of the National Society of Black Physicists. He’s also the author of A Quantum Life: My Unlikely Journey from the Street to the Stars.

In This Episode

Gregory Washington

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News

Our Future Transformed web series

Honors College

Space

Communication major looks to the stars with NASA internship

Sarah Holland — Thu, 31 Aug 2023 20:45:14 +0000

Communication major looks to the stars with NASA internship Sarah Holland Thu, 08/31/2023 - 16:45

Ever since sixth grade, Ricky Chang looked up at the stars and wondered what could be out there in the vastness of unexplored space.

Photo provided by NASA

Now, he has a front row seat to interstellar research.

The brand-new �鶹��Ƶ alum spent the summer at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center as a Commercialization, Innovation and Synergies Office (CIS) intern. “I’ve always admired NASA, so it’s kind of like a fever dream” said Chang, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s degree in communication. “It’s really cool seeing all these knowledgeable and passionate people working on amazing projects. I haven’t met a single person who isn’t excited to be here.”

The CIS Office finds government and industry partners to work with on space research and exploration. “NASA sets the policy, while private industry advances the technology,” Chang explained. “CIS helps the aerospace community to understand what we’re doing, why we’re doing it, and—hopefully—want to be a part of it.”

His work was predominantly content marketing: creating video scripts, developing communications plans for university outreach to partner on the upcoming Artemis II launch, and writing employee spotlights.

“You don’t usually associate communications with NASA. Everything thinks, ‘oh, engineers, scientists, telescopes,’ things like that,” Chang said. “So to get the internship with my background in media production and communications was so exciting. There’s a chance for me to work in this field I’ve always admired, after all.”

Like his interest in the great mysteries of the galaxies, Chang’s interest in media production started in his youth, filming and editing videos of himself and his friends as they rode their BMX bikes. At �鶹��Ƶ, Chang further developed his skills through a concentration in media production and criticism and working on podcasts for WGMU.

At his internship, Chang was encouraged to utilize those skills through media production projects: He scripted, produced, and recorded voice-overs for a series of short videos that will be embedded on NASA’s website. “I’m working my way up to be the voice of the countdown,” he joked.

“My communication degree has helped a lot in navigating this internship,” he said. “In this program I do a lot of communicating, and I’m seeing the theories I learned play out in the workplace. I’ve taken writing classes where I learned how to write across media, which helps when writing pieces for NASA that need to be concise yet persuasive. All the media production courses I’ve taken led to me creating and doing voiceovers the NASA videos. My professors gave me a really solid foundation.”

Ricky Chang, left, sits in the control room at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. Photo provided by NASA.

This internship is the first foot in the door for Chang, who is seizing every opportunity he can to secure a future career at NASA. “I tried to meet with every multimedia person I could, so that if one day I apply for a full-time position they’ll remember me,” he said.

It seems his work has paid off. While Chang’s time at �鶹��Ƶ concludes with the completion of this internship, his time at NASA is just beginning: He’s accepted another internship for the fall, where he’ll be working directly with NASA engineers in the Engineering and Technology Directorate (ETD).

“I want to work somewhere that lets me feel creative and supports my multimedia background, where I can really contribute and make an impact,” he said. “NASA gives me those opportunities and so much more.”

Get some tips for finding your own internship

Topics

Summer Internship

NASA

College of Humanities and Social Sciences

Department of Communication

Students

WGMU

Space

Berea serves on NASA's UAP panel

ckearney — Tue, 20 Jun 2023 20:37:13 +0000

Berea serves on NASA's UAP panel ckearney Tue, 06/20/2023 - 16:37

Last fall NASA selected �鶹��Ƶ’s Anamaria Berea to participate in its independent study team on unidentified anomalous phenomena (UAP). The 16-person panel was asked to “identify how data gathered by civilian government entities, commercial data, and data from other sources can potentially be analyzed to shed light on UAPs” and recommend a roadmap for future analysis.

�鶹��Ƶ researcher Anamaria Berea at the NASA UAP panel on May 31, 2023. Photo by NASA

An expert in data and computational science, Berea has been working closely with the panel to carefully express the possibilities—as well as the limits—to open-source data from NASA, FAA, NOAA, and other government agencies, when studying this phenomena. While she has aspirations that this could spur a new field of study with standardized data collection, she appreciate the value of scientific rigor and has cautioned against rushing to conclusions with a high standard of evidence. The team expects to release its final report by the end of July.

Working with NASA

This is not the first time Berea has shared her computational and data science skills with NASA. After being the first woman to earn a PhD in computation social sciences at �鶹��Ƶ, Berea saw an ad where Frontier Development Lab (FDL), an artificial intelligence (AI) research accelerator partnered with NASA and the SETI Institute, was looking for data scientists. She applied and got selected.

Her first project with NASA was within the eight-week summer challenges of FDL. The lab brings together data scientists and subject matter experts in space and earth sciences to focus on major challenges by applying data sciences, particularly machine learning and deep learning methods, to space science problems, such as the shape of asteroids, finding exoplanets, and astronaut health, among others.

“The idea is—can we come up with some artificial intelligence algorithms that can solve a big problem,” said Berea, who is an associate professor in Computational and Data Sciences Department in the College of Science.

Berea’s first challenge with the lab focused on forecasting solar flares and solar winds, which can impact the lives of the astronauts in space, as well as electronics and power grids on Earth. Then she became a mentor to an astrobiology challenge that was simulating the exoplanetary atmospheres based on metabolic networks.

Berea, who is currently affiliate faculty member with the FDL lab, was also a mentor for a challenge that designed a semi-supervised algorithm for unlabeled Earth Observation images, to automatically identify major atmospheric events in satellite imagery.

“The satellites are taking lots of pictures, but they are not labeled. We don't know what those images are without human input,” she said. “We are talking about petabytes of data that are basically impossible for the human researchers to search manually. The challenge for us was to create an algorithm that will automatically identify types of phenomena—such as a hurricane or sandstorm—in these satellite pictures.”

Another challenge she mentored last year was to create a knowledge graph, using natural language processing algorithms, to discover scientific datasets across all NASA SMD (Science Mission Directorate) fields, as well as in European Space Agency (ESA) and Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) repositories. For example, a scientist looking for a dataset on a specific star can find these datasets not only in astrophysics tagged data, but also heliophysics or planetary sciences.

The Science Behind the Search of Extraterrestrial Life

Berea is also an affiliate of the SETI Institute. For the uninitiated, SETI is an acronym for Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence. Berea said, when it comes to searching for life on other planets, there are two signatures of potential life to look for: one is using biosignatures (present or past signatures of microbial or cellular life), the other is technosignatures (present or past signatures of life that developed technology in some form).

“Finding a biosignature means that you’ve found biological evidence of some sort that you can say ‘it's life,’” she said. “It can be microbial, it can be vegetation, or it can be nothing like we are used to seeing on Earth.”

“Looking for a technosignature means that we are searching for evidence of technology that might have been developed by a potentially intelligent species that is or was at some point out there,” she said. “And the technosignature can be the imprint of the satellites that are orbiting a planet, or a radio or optical wave that is out of the normal natural spectrum. Another technosignature might be an artifact from a dead civilization somewhere. The difference is that a technosignature means that there is some technology that has been developed, present or in the past, by another civilization.”

Berea said one of the big misconceptions is that if there is a discovery, it's going a specific point in time. But the truth is it will take years. “First you get the data, then you need to analyze the data, and then of course you need to have conversations and debate the discovery with so many scientists from so many fields.”

As an example, she uses a meteorite discovered during the Clinton administration that some scientists believe shows traces of past microbial life on Mars. It's been two decades, she said, and they are still debating the data and analysis from that meteorite. “The whole scientific process of validation, verification…you need to be sure when you make such a big announcement. It is a long process.”

Berea acknowledges that many scientists and much of the general public are inclined toward believing there is life is out there.

“If you're thinking just in probabilistic terms, the probability should be really high,” she said. “But the question becomes—how do you identify ‘life’?”

Berea said the search comes down to two issues. The chances of having two civilizations that are comparable in terms of technological development at the same time is one problem. The second problem is just how big the universe is.

“It's so big that any signal that we are sending now can take between hundreds and thousands of years to reach other parts of the galaxy and vice versa. The sheer vastness of the universe is the biggest barrier to actually finding something.”

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